UFC News - Page 275

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Could we be on the verge of a new era in the UFC – an era of a new-look Nick Diaz? UFC President Dana White told MMAjunkie.com the welterweight title challenger "couldn't have been cooler" at a news conference for UFC 158.

Lost in all of the UFC on FOX 6 coverage was the announcement of a new welterweight fight scheduled for May 25th. "Wonderboy" Stephen Thompson aims to rebound from his first pro MMA loss against Amir Sadollah. MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani has the details:
Sources told MMA Fighting's Ariel Helwani on Friday that Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson will face Amir Sadollah in a welterweight battle on Sat., May 25. While a venue for the unnamed event has yet to be determined, the UFC traditionally holds Memorial Day weekend cards in Las Vegas.

Quinton "Rampage" Jackson might not have given us everything we wanted in his farewell UFC fight, but he did give us all that we had a right to expect.
He came, he saw, he took his beating bravely. He went down but refused to stay put. He threw murderous hooks and uppercuts that sliced through the air, finding nothing. He looked at times like he might have wanted to quit, but he never did. Only in brief spasms did he resemble a fighter the UFC might be willing to shell out the big bucks in order to retain. At no point did he seem particularly bothered by that fact...

The UFC's globetrotting ways are expected to continue in 2013, really to no one's surprise.
And the calendar year could feature the promotion heading to a new market that has produced one of the most highly regarded fighters in history.
UFC President Dana White believes the company will make its way to Russia sometime in 2013 for its first live event there...

HTFU founder Mark Gingrich found himself in a difficult spot this past Tuesday.
Gingrich, who launched his lifestyle apparel brand in 2009, recently told Sherdog.com that he received a multitude of verbal and physical threats after news broke on Tuesday that he had put a stop payment on a sponsorship check issued to Rick Hawn for his appearance at Bellator 85.
Hawn, who challenged Michael Chandler for Bellator’s lightweight strap in the Jan. 17 main event on Spike TV, announced the development via Twitter on Monday night, though he did not specifically name HTFU in his post. Nevertheless, Gingrich says that his office and website were bombarded the following day by phone calls and emails.
“I’ve been threatened. My girlfriend has been threatened. People who work for the company have been threatened. [Some were] death threats. I lost an employee because of this. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life,” Gingrich recently told Sherdog.com “I would have happily paid $10,000 for that not to have happened -- for my girlfriend and for my employees to not have had to go through that. At the end of the day, I’m pretty disgusted at how [those individuals in the] MMA community conducted themselves.”

After weeks of trash-talk, verbal sparring an intense weigh-in prior to their fight, Glover Teixeira got some true words of encouragement following his win over Quinton "Rampage" Jackson in Saturday's UFC on FOX 6 co-main event.

Following his incredible win over Ben Henderson at WEC 53, Pettis was promised a UFC LW title shot that got brushed under the rug. Now, two years later, an equally impressive win over Cerrone has finally got him back to contendership.

The UFC started and ended tonight's FOX event with fights getting cut off at the turn of the hour. On Facebook, the Simeon Thoresen vs. David Mitchell fight was cut off at 5 PM ET, which was the time FX was supposed to go live with the other 6 prelims. In tonight's main event between Demetrious Johnson and John Dodson, at least one FOX affiliate apparently switched off the UFC broadcast to go into the 10 PM ET rerun of an episode of "The Big Bang Theory". Here are some tweets from disgruntled viewers.

As far as Demetrious Johnson was concerned, the scouting report on John Dodson was to take him into deep waters, sure that Dodson could not carry his explosiveness into the final moments of a tense fight. And as the UFC on FOX 6 flyweight title bout began, it soon became clear that Johnson would have to be right. As Dodson got off to a strong start, Johnson's room for error narrowed until there was almost none left.
When Johnson was knocked down in the second, his challenge grew. But slowly, the tide turned. The spring in Johnson's legs lessened, and the explosion on his punches turned to a lesser pop. And that was Johnson's time to take over. Time to shine.
Those final 10 minutes -- the "championship rounds" -- were all his. Johnson is one of the rarest breeds in fight sports who can fight at maximum RPMs from beginning to end. And when Dodson couldn't keep up, Johnson took total control.
Battering Dodson from the clinch with knees to the head and body, Johnson dominated the fourth and fifth rounds, and captured a unanimous decision at the United Center in Chicago.

Have you ever heard of the Culinary Union? It has nothing to do with the Culinary Academy, a place for cooking that Jared Allen likes to joke about when introducing himself on Sunday Night Football.
The Culinary Union I am talking about is an adversary the UFC has gone up with many times before. It is the group that is currently ensuring that the UFC stays out of New York.
However, this time around, they are leading the charge with other women’s groups to try and get Quinton Jackson taken off of the UFC on Fox 6 card in Chicago.

According to Jon Jones, "Rampage" Jackson's "tough guy" persona is all a front because in reality, he's nothing but a "baby" and a "wuss" that spends his time complaining about everything.
His words:
"Yeah, the oblique kick, Joe Rogan named it. I don't know, he's a wuss, he's a wuss. He has this tough guy persona but he complains about anything that doesn't go in his favor. ‘Oh, my contract. Oh, he wants to take me down, that's not real fighting.' He is such a baby, he's a baby."

Mike Dolce has one question for Quinton Jackson: "Why would you do that?" The nutrition/weight-cutting consultant and former fighter has been perplexed by the ex-champ's attack on him in the buildup to to this Saturday's UFC on FOX 6 event.

The middleweight division is going through more than a few changes lately with some of the top contenders losing and new challengers emerging at the top.
One familiar face that planted himself back in the race was former UFC champion Vitor Belfort, who took care of Michael Bisping in dramatic fashion earlier this month with a head kick knockout at UFC on FX 7.
While Belfort is still likely a couple of fights away from possibly earning a rematch with champion Anderson Silva, he can still climb the ladder by beating other top contenders along the way.
The fighter most likely to find himself standing across the Octagon from Belfort next is former Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold...